


Crocus

by Casia_sage



Series: Snufmin Week 2019 [1]
Category: Moominvalley (Cartoon 2019), Mumintroll | Moomins Series - Tove Jansson, 楽しいムーミン一家 | Moomin (Anime 1990)
Genre: Don't Examine This Too Closely, Fluff and Angst, Gardens & Gardening, Gen, I don't really like this but oh well, I don't think that I've ever written in 2nd so pls be nice, Language of Flowers, M/M, No Smut, Other, POV Second Person, Prose Poem, Purple Prose, Strawberries, a lil bit, but it's pretty gay ya'll, can be read as platonic, lots of metaphors and italics bc it's me, season metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-01 19:40:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19184329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Casia_sage/pseuds/Casia_sage
Summary: Snufmin Appreciation Day 1 -flowersMama told you that early autumn is the best time to plant crocuses, that they are one of the first flowers to bloom in the spring.





	Crocus

i. You go strawberry picking with promises of sticky-sweet jams and pies. The summer wind is heavy against your body. You look over to Snufkin, his sleeves and pant legs rolled up, draped from head to toe in a mantle of honeyed, wind-swept sunlight. There are fresh flowers around his hat, the so-sweet, bloody nectar of the lovely crushed fruit on his fingers. You close your eyes and listen to the distant birdsong and the sound of his breathing.

ii. You have finished planting crocuses in front of your house and now you’re planting them by the bridge.  
He’s sitting on the edge of the bridge, playing his mouth organ; a song of oaks and pines and sparrows and dried flower petals, and it tastes like new beginnings on your lips.

Mama told you that early autumn is the best time to plant crocuses, that they are one of the first flowers to bloom in the spring. You don’t tell Snufkin that you’re planting these ones for him, so he’ll be the first one to see them, come spring--you don’t need to tell him (when spring comes again, he will see them and he will _understand)._

Though he’s there beside you, you can feel the heavy weight of his absence on your soul, a trembling stillness, an aching, boiling-hot, ice-cold, crystallized, autumn pain. Your heart feels like it’s molting because it's _almost winter._

iii. You watch from your window at the heavy wind and the cold sky. There’s a lantern lit, glittering and flickering from a lantern-post across the bridge; the light is blurred and shaken through tears. The moon is bright enough to light up the whole valley--you imagine him, ethereal and full on the dreams he had for dinner, bathed in the moonlight, soft and silvery--but his tent is gone, a puff of ashen smoke from the remnants of a campfire are all that’s left in his wake.

Your crocuses are snow capped and wilting. You allow yourself a moment to succumb to the ache in your chest, half-empty, like the echo of a cello, soft and full of shuddering.

You shut your window and go to bed with unspoken goodbyes still thick on your tongue.

iv. Spring has come again, like you know it always will, despite the hollow-withering that you feel buried deep in your chest all winter, like a bumblebee hibernating on the north banks.

Light touches the windows, touches your body. Crocuses, a vast array of purples and whites and oranges and yellows (your tendrils echo fallacy). Your boy’s bones are made of freedom, and you’ve always loved his adventurous soul as long as he comes home when he’s tired. You look at the empty valley around you--full of green life and laughter and birdsong and _fields of flowers_ , but your zealous heart looks around at the empty field across the bridge, looking for green life and laughter in the shape of a person, flower-clad and pink-cheeked (like the flowers that cover the hillsides, his berry-stained fingers) and tells you that Spring isn’t here after all.

You sit on the bridge by your crocuses, snowdrops wilting in your hand. You wait.

**Author's Note:**

> Crocuses—youthfulness, cheerfulness


End file.
